Artistic Embodiment
Black Motion in Art(s) and Power: A Fragmented Journal on the Body, Politics, Black Arts Movement and Black Power Movement
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Noel Price-Bracey
In this paper I use dance as a lens through which to examine the Black Arts and Black Power Movements. Despite the historiographical tendency to categorize dance as an auxiliary function of these social movements, I argue that dance is one of the primary means by and through which activists and artists distribute messages of meaning to their community and to society. Conceptualizing dance broadly as rehearsed, improvised, and/or pedestrian movements, I analyze the gestural movements of Stokely Carmichael, and the concert works of Eleo Pomare to counter the danceless narrative that has misrepresented the Black Power and Black Arts Movements.
Designing Spaces for Social Justice: Art And Design Trigger Actions For Harm Reduction Strategies In Cali, Colombia
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Christiaan Job Nieman, María Andrea Luque García, Daniel Huertas Nadal
The development of the first center focused on harm reduction for heroin users in Colombia, used collaborative methodologies, to truly make it a community-based center. Using trigger actions in Arts, Design and Architecture, the project started with participatory workshops including different actors in the community: opioid consumers, peers, neighbors and the center employees. The process focused on designing the service of supervised consumption to end up designing the space where the services will be offered. The design team addressed this proposal under the principles of harm reduction, through a multi-scale strategy of trigger actions with different types of impact, to generate social inclusion for communities at risk of exclusion. These trigger actions are developed mainly with the existing resources of the territory, weaving and promising a more connected community. The methodology introduces the principles of 'social justice design', addressing (through design) the political issues concerning the regulations that affect these centers. This approach makes it possible to rethink the perception of this center as a health service and distance the design from the expectations of a white, clinical space devoid of character. In this sense, trigger actions also configure a message to propose to the regulatory institutions how to do it from the base. Projects that affect vulnerable social realities require strategic and contextualized approaches that include different times, rhythms and actions from design, art, architecture.
VR Art Is Destined to Fail: Circumventing the Problem of Realism, or ‘Success’, of Virtual Reality in Contemporary Art
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session Suzanne Mooney
“VR art is destined to fail,” is a bias that I have harboured for some time. In the pursuit of creating immersive art, technology has great potential to enhance viewer experience. However, optimal engagement finds the viewer immersed in experiencing an artwork sensorially, while also promoting engagement with the content of the work, i.e. engaging with the subject of the work intellectually, aesthetically, emotionally, etc., and attributing value to the experience. VR, by its nature, sets up the expectation of a simulated/alternate reality. However, as VR’s technologically-mediated experience is predominantly a visual experience, the lack of multi-sensory experience, coupled with low resolution, the experience can never mimic reality successfully. I introduce three examples of immersive engagement in art, mediated by various degrees of analogue/digital formats, ex. painting, video, virtual reality. I examine the effect of the various media on the viewer experience, and argue that while technologically-mediated immersion can enhance the realism of the viewer experience, it is only when the performance of the technology can be disregarded a genuinely immersive experience can occur. This research builds on extensive experience in arts practice and several years of research on immersive viewer experiences and media-specificity in contemporary art. The premise that VR art is destined to fail, is something that I attempt to disprove. In conclusion, I introduce an example of expanded cinema that circumvents the problem of realism, or ‘success’ of the medium, and actually succeeds in creating an engaging and immersive experience.
